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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26186131">Listen to Your Heart Bleed</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnabelleVeal/pseuds/AnnabelleVeal'>AnnabelleVeal</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Old Guard (Movie 2020)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Apocalypse, Climate Change, Far Far Future, Future Fic, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Post-Canon, Team as Family</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 04:28:30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,286</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26186131</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnabelleVeal/pseuds/AnnabelleVeal</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“I think,” Nicky said, as they watched the flare of the rocket light up the horizon before disappearing into the atmosphere, “I would like to see the stars again.”</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Booker | Sebastien le Livre &amp; Nile Freeman, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>59</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>271</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>The title is from R.E.M.'s It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine) because I have no shame</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Later, Nile would think that it was a real testament to how much Booker had grown over the years that when he cut himself shaving, he didn't immediately blow his brains out and instead went down to the living room with a little piece of tissue stuck to his still-bleeding neck.</p><p>Joe spotted it first and reached out to brush it away, but Booker looked up and Joe froze when he met his eyes. </p><p>“Oh,” he said softly, hand still poised between them.</p><p>"So, what happens now?" Nile asked.</p><p>Booker shrugged and spread his hands wide. "<em>Après moi, le déluge</em>," he said, with a hint of his old irony.</p><p>He caught her worried look and clapped a hand on her shoulder. "I'm not going anywhere. I've stuck around this long, might as well see how this whole thing ends."</p><p>---</p><p>Sometime in the mid-21st century, when Nile found out exactly how old Andy was, she had started to worry what a similar lifespan would mean for her.</p><p>All around them, irrevocable, undeniable changes to the planet were happening, and yet nothing came of it except further descent into tribalism and increasingly petty wars. </p><p>"I’ve come to believe," Copley had said to her once, as she sat beside him watching the poison that was keeping him alive drip slowly down the tubing and into the needle in his arm, "that fundamentally most people aren't able to look death directly in the eye and still get out of bed each morning."</p><p>"We are, though.”</p><p>"Yes," he had agreed with a tired smile. "We are."</p><p>Like every group project, all it took in the end was a hard deadline. Humanity couldn't come together to prevent a crisis, but when they as a species finally stared down death, they managed to build a fleet of incredible starships that could carry everyone who was willing away from this broken rock. Nile hoped that it was a lesson they would take with them to whatever new worlds they found.</p><p>---</p><p>Nearly a year after Booker stopped healing, Nicky was cooking breakfast while Nile sat at the small kitchen table. They were watching the news broadcast – live footage of the launch of the first ark ship – when he grazed the back of his hand against the hot burner and yelped in surprise. Nile glanced over at him, her own eyes having been glued to the video feed as well, but he waved away her concern. </p><p>When he set a plate of food down in front of her, though, she reached out and caught his wrist. He watched as she carefully turned his hand over and followed her gaze to the red welt above his knuckles. She brushed a finger across the still-hot skin, and he hissed at the sensation.</p><p>“<i>Nicky,</i>” she said, voice thick with emotion. </p><p>They stared at each other for a long moment until the sound of footsteps made them both look up. Joe appeared in the doorway, and immediately Nicky was up and moving towards him. Wordlessly, he held out his hand and Joe took it between his own, cradling it gently in his palm. </p><p>No matter how much longer she lived, Nile didn't think she would ever forget the sound that Joe made when he realized.</p><p>There was a pocket knife lying on the table. Joe sped over and grabbed it, but his hands were shaking too badly and he held it out to Nile. "Please," he said, voice hoarse, and she could hear every unspoken plea churning beneath the surface.</p><p>She took the knife from Joe's hand and got up from the table. She rummaged in the cabinet for a moment before returning with a small first aid kit. Joe had sunk down into a chair and Nicky stood behind him, hands on his shoulders. </p><p>She tore open a packet of alcohol wipes and carefully swiped one along the knife blade and another across Joe's skin. "Just in case," she said. "Nobody's dying of sepsis on my watch."</p><p>She held Joe's arm firmly with one hand, and with the other she made a short, shallow cut just below his elbow. Nicky closed his eyes, lips moving silently as they formed the shapes of ancient prayers.</p><p>They watched as blood pooled on the skin surface. Nile wiped it away with a piece of gauze, but the cut showed no signs of closing. Joe sagged with relief. He dropped his head into his hands and Nicky followed, wrapping his arms around Joe's shoulders, whispering into his hair, "I promised you we would leave this world together."</p><p>Behind them on the screen, the I.S.S. Exodus streaked across the sky, hurtling out of orbit, barreling towards the unknown.</p><p>---</p><p>Things started to change after that. Time felt strangely frozen. They stopped taking any jobs, instead staying close to the safe house. Nile told herself it was just a break, a little time to recalibrate, but deep down she knew there was more to it than that. </p><p>She watched as they kept working, each in their own way, to help where they could. There was an old gym down the road that now housed one of the many doomsday cults that had sprung up in the last few years. Joe spent a lot of time hanging around there, talking with the younger kids and the less hardline members, trying to get them to consider leaving on the ships. Nicky volunteered at a medical station nearby, doing preflight screenings and patching up the day-to-day injuries that were common in this new, harsher world. </p><p>And Booker, well, <em>booked</em> things. He found tickets for families who couldn't get passage on the same ships, forged exit documents for refugees who didn't have the correct papers, and used his dwindling list of contacts to smuggle out art and artifacts that had been deemed nonessential. </p><p>They pretended that it was business as usual, but Nile knew that what they were really doing was tying up loose ends. Last one out turns off the lights.</p><p>One morning after her shower, Nile stood naked in front of the mirror and examined her body. Nothing looked different, but still she wondered. Maybe even their impossible biology couldn’t survive the toxic state of the planet.</p><p>She pressed her fingernails hard into the skin beneath her collarbone, but they didn't leave a mark. </p><p>She tried again with a pair of scissors and watched as the wound knitted closed. Well. It was an answer anyway, even if she wasn’t sure it was the one she wanted.</p><p>---</p><p>Six months later, Nicky was walking through the living room when he paused behind Joe, who was bent over a book reading, and plucked a white hair from the crown of his head. Nicky teased him about it over lunch, Nile and Booker joining in, but the mood quickly turned somber. </p><p>That night, they all lay outside to watch the latest ship launch. The air was heavy and still, not even a hint of a breeze. It was so quiet these days – no more droning insects or chirping birds, no raucous choruses of bullfrogs serenading each other. Even the constant buzz of civilization, the noisy thrum of people going about their lives, had dulled as more and more of the population took flight. </p><p><em>Nothing that lives, lives forever</em>, Nile thought, an echo of Andy’s words from long ago. </p><p>Above them the sky was an ashen gray, the faint outline of the moon barely visible through the thick, ever-present haze of smog.</p><p>“I think,” Nicky said, as they watched the flare of the rocket light up the horizon before disappearing into the atmosphere, “I would like to see the stars again.”</p><p>---</p><p>Nile slipped out early the next morning, leaving before dawn. She returned a few hours later and found them all in the kitchen. She laid three sets of tickets for the last ship off the planet down on the table.</p><p>Three pairs of eyes turned to stare at her.</p><p>Her vision began to swirl with tears, but she blinked them back and said with a watery laugh, "It's a generation ship. They're gonna notice when I outlive mine."</p><p>---</p><p>No one tried to talk her out of it.  She didn't know if that meant they thought she was right, or just that they knew her mind was made up.</p><p>---</p><p>Nile went with them as far as the launch site terminal. Nicky turned towards her first, pulling her in and holding on so tight she almost couldn't breathe. When he let go, he pressed a kiss to her forehead and said, "Don't ever forget that as long as you are in this world, there is still good in it."</p><p>Joe hugged her for a very long time before he pulled back and dug a piece of paper from his bag and handed it to her. It looked like it was torn from one of his old notebooks, and on one side was a drawing of their family. The details were softened by time and the vagaries of memory, but she recognized it immediately as a day they'd spent together at the beach in Brighton, so many years ago. She had wanted a picture of the six of them, for once just happy and at ease. Andy still insisted it was too dangerous to leave documentation floating around in the world, but she agreed to a compromise. They had snapped a photo, and then Joe took out his notebook and sketched them from the reference before deleting it. They burned the original drawing with Andy's body, but Joe had recreated it well and Nile traced her finger along each of their faces in turn.</p><p>On the other side was a charcoal portrait of her in profile, head thrown back, mouth open wide in laughter at something or someone unseen. </p><p>"<em>Hold onto the joy, little sister</em>," he said to her in Arabic, using the diminutive form she hadn't heard in centuries. Tears were threatening to spill over his lower lashes and she couldn't bear to watch them fall, so she pulled him and Nicky in, embracing them both one last time before they stepped back and headed into the terminal, giving her a moment alone with Booker.</p><p>He looked at her for a long while, expression inscrutable. "Are you going to be okay?" he asked.</p><p>"Are you?" she shot back. His mouth quirked up in a half smile and he reached out, folding her into a tight hug. </p><p>"Thank you," he whispered against the side of her head, "for helping me find my hope again."</p><p>---</p><p>Nile didn't stay to see the launch. She had stashed her things near the base of the driveway so that she wouldn't have to go back to the house, but as she approached it, she couldn't help but continue up the hill to take one last look.</p><p>Somewhere along the way, they had stopped moving around so much and the safe house had become a home. They spread out and settled in – books and artwork and weapons strewn haphazardly around, clothes in dressers instead of in tightly-packed go bags, good mattresses and cupboards stocked with favorites from around the world. Booker had even started a small garden, back when the weather still allowed for such things. </p><p>He'd briefly gotten into hydroponics, talking excitedly about the upcoming harvest of fresh fruit and vegetables.</p><p>"Among other things," Nicky had said with a grin, miming taking a hit off a joint. </p><p>Booker just laughed, but a week later Nile had found an old copy of The Secret Garden on her bed with a hollowed-out compartment inside containing two thick blunts and a note reading <em>don't tell Nicky</em>.</p><p>In the present, the house loomed silent and dark in front of her, imposing in its emptiness. Nile knew now for certain that she couldn't stay here without them. It would become a mausoleum for her loneliness, and she would be crushed under the weight.</p><p>---</p><p>She didn't know where to go, but she decided to head south. She spent all day walking, catching rest in patches of shade when she needed to, her skin blistering and healing over and over again in the midday sun. The roads were mostly empty, and the few travelers she did see were all going back the way she’d came. She passed a caravan of refugees, trying to make their way to the launch site in a last desperate attempt to get off this dying world. She didn't have the heart to tell them that they were too late, so she just shared some of her rations and scribbled down directions to the safe house in case they needed a place to stay. She'd left the pantry full and the generator charged; it wouldn't be enough, but it was something.</p><p>Days began to blur together, and Nile let her mind drift as her feet carried her onward, seemingly navigating at random until one day she looked up and realized where she'd been going all along.</p><p>She had asked Andy once, how she could keep straight all the places she'd been when the names and the maps kept changing.</p><p>Andy had smiled, crow’s feet crinkling the corners of her eyes, her features softened by aging and Quynh's return. "The places that matter – the places that are home – you know them by feel, by love, not by name or borders."</p><p>Nile had thought she was being metaphorical at the time, but as she descended into the dried riverbed, the steel ribs of long-fallen buildings rising around her, she knew without question that this was once her home. </p><p>It had been at least a hundred years since Nile had been back. They'd come to help in the aftermath of a giant tornado that had leveled everything in a fifteen-mile radius. The riverbed forked up ahead, and her longing pulled her southward. She knew what she would find there, though, what she had found the last time she was here, and she knew it could not help her. All the people, all the places from her past, they were lost to time. She couldn't remember her mother's face, or the sound of her brother's voice, but she could still feel the warmth of their love tugging her home.</p><p>She turned east instead.  </p><p>Someday, Nile thought, she would forget Quynh and Andy's faces. Joe and Nicky and Booker's, too. If she got enough somedays, she would forget birdsong and the tickle of grass between her toes, the thrilling shock of diving into cold water on a hot day. The smell of fresh baked bread, the sound of someone humming a tune soft and low, and what it’s like to hold a person you love in your arms. She would forget what it is to have a family.   </p><p>The rules of this immortality were still a mystery, but she didn't think they had been meant to outlive the Earth.</p><p>Her boot connected with something solid, and the hollow metallic clunk startled her from her thoughts. She looked up and couldn't help her astonished laugh as she took in the weathered remains of a huge bronze lion. </p><p>"Even now I'm still the new kid in town," she murmured, as she reached up to rub its mane, worn almost totally smooth by time and the elements, before shrugging off her pack and settling down in its shade.  </p><p>Nile stared out at the vast barren desert ahead of her. Once, there was a lake here so big you couldn't see the other side. She wondered what they had thought, the first people to encounter that strange inland ocean, when they discovered waves of fresh water lapping at the shore.</p><p>She let herself look up at the sky, just for a moment, as she sent up a wordless prayer – thanks and yearning and too many other things to name. She shifted back, bracketed by the sturdy paws of the statue, and closed her eyes. </p><p>---</p><p>When she opened them again, the sun was sinking low behind her. To her left, a shadow approached, stretching out long and thin along the dusty ground.</p><p>She listened to the footsteps, relaxing her grip slightly on the axe lying across her lap.</p><p>"I didn't think I'd see you again."</p><p>Booker dropped a hand onto her shoulder and sank down beside her on creaking knees.</p><p>"Have a little faith," he said with a smile, and Nile leaned into him as they watched the coming darkness creep across the sky.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Choose Your Own Adventure time! This is the "official" ending, but Chapter 2 is an optional epilogue if you'd prefer something slightly more hopeful.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Optional epilogue</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>They were about three days into the trek back to the safe house when some marauders got the drop on them. Nile shoved Booker behind her as the first shots rang out, and then she started slashing away with Andy’s axe in one hand and Joe’s scimitar in the other. She killed seven or eight of them and scattered the rest, but not before Booker took a bullet to the heart. </p><p>She crouched down beside his slumped body, staring numbly at his slack jaw and vacant, glassy expression. She was about to reach out and close his eyes when he blinked, gasped, and bolted upright.</p><p>Nile stumbled backwards. “What the <em>shit</em>, Booker!” </p><p>He scrambled to his feet and pawed frantically at his chest, catching the bullet as it pushed its way out of his skin.</p><p>“I thought you couldn't heal anymore,” she said, incredulous.</p><p>“So did I.”  </p><p>They both stared at the flattened bullet as he turned it over in his hand.</p><p>“Booker,” she started slowly, an insane possibility beginning to take shape in her mind, “After you cut yourself that one time, did you ever test it again? Like, just to double check?”</p><p>Booker paused, and then his eyes went very wide.</p><p>Nile sat back in the dirt. Pressing her palm against her forehead she ground out, "How long, <em>exactly</em>, did it take that first cut to heal?"</p><p>He mumbled something towards his shoes.</p><p>"I'm sorry, <em>what was that</em>?" she said, as she leaned forward to catch his gaze.</p><p>"I said," he closed his eyes and tilted his head back, "That I never actually saw the cut. But to be fair," he looked at her imploringly, "there really was a lot of blood."</p><p>Nile pushed herself to her feet and rounded on him. "Are you telling me that you nicked yourself shaving, bled a little bit more than usual, and then immediately decided that you were mortal now?"</p><p>"Well it had never happened like that before! It's not like we have a whole lot of experience with this part.” Booker huffed and ran his hand through his hair. “Besides, you never said anything about double checking when I told you."</p><p>"Because I assumed you had actual proof!” she replied, exasperated. “You came downstairs being all stoic and weird, and then you had some sort of tragic eye-conversation with Joe and started quoting Louis XV at us."</p><p>Booker opened and closed his mouth a couple times before shrugging, deflated.</p><p>"Jesus Christ," Nile sighed. She pinched the bridge of her nose and took a deep breath, and then it was like all of the fight went out of her and laughter came bubbling up, unbidden. Booker just watched, his hangdog expression becoming something soft and fond as she continued to dissolve into hysterics.</p><p>“You have no idea,” she said between gasps, “how glad I am that you are <em>that</em> fucking stupid.”</p><p>He laughed then, too, and said, “Actually yeah, I think I do.” Nile stepped towards him and threw her arms around his neck, and they clung to each other for a long time, holding on as laughter turned to tears.</p><p>---</p><p>Later, while Nile was setting up their makeshift campsite for the night, Booker turned to her and asked, "So who are all those people in our house?"</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>In my deepest darkest heart of hearts, I think I narratively prefer the gut-punch of a mortal Booker at the end of the story, but it bummed me out so much while writing it that I came up with this alternative option as a fix-it. So we get Schrödinger's Booker who is both mortal and immortal and you can pick whichever one you want ❤</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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